


Hope

by hunters_retreat



Category: Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Angst, Derek has hope, John Baum is becoming John Connor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:32:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not that hope Derek, I don’t have that hope.  I’m just a soldier.  I’ll fight because I have to, to keep people alive, to keep the Terminators from winning, but it’s not about hope.  It’s just survival.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

 

John Connor always talked of hope.  He talked about it like it was the only thing that made them different than the machines, this hope that they could make it through, that they could improve, that they could keep from making the same mistakes in the future.

Kyle Reese ate it up, like a starving man and he wasn’t the only one.

Derek Reese, however, wasn’t like his brother.   Derek didn’t breathe that hope in and he didn’t fight for hope and he sure as hell didn’t live _for_ it.  He was a soldier.  He lived to see his brother safe, to keep the machines from getting any more of them than they already had. 

When John Connor told him he could follow his brother back into the past, knowing he was already dead but with the knowledge that maybe they could make a difference in the world, he went gladly.  It wasn’t to see the world again as it had once been, like a few of the others.  It was to set things right, to try to steal the world back for his little brother.

Nothing happened the way he thought it would though and instead, he was living with the man who would one day see them strong, that would, if the stories were right, see them survive the machines. 

 

** 

 

He stood outside his door, looking in at the boy that had become a man right before his eyes.  There were times he wanted to curse Sarah Connor for making him too hard, too young  but he couldn’t see another way either.  He’d do it in a heartbeat if he could.  He’d do anything to give John a childhood free of the terrors they knew were coming, but it wasn’t possible.

“She told me once,” John’s voice was barely a whisper but Derek knew he was meant to be drawn in by it.  His nephew had an instinctive grasp of how to call men to him, when to be loud and angry and when the calm of a whisper could cool heads and hearts until they were reasonable again.

“That the future was like Pandora’s box, that the human race had unleashed the worst of hell onto itself, but that the box contained one good thing.” 

Derek sat on the edge of the bed, watching the way the sunlight caught dust particles in the air before caressing the young man’s face as he laid there, eyes distant and haunted. 

“She was that box, and in her laid the hope of all humanity in the form of her son.”

John’s eyes looked up at him as his hand wrapped around Derek’s wrist, commanding him to stay.

As if Derek could make himself leave at that moment.

“I’m not that hope Derek, I don’t have that hope.  I’m just a soldier.  I’ll fight because I have to, to keep people alive, to keep the Terminators from winning, but it’s not about hope.  It’s just survival.”

Derek let out a harsh breath, his eyes caught in John’s.  The air was full of pain and anger and despair enough to choke on, but just beneath that there was something more. 

Determination.

Derek nodded but he felt something foreign blossom in his chest.  He stared at John, remembering it, feeling it for the first time since he’d run for shelter, his little brother’s hand clenched tightly in his own.   

Derek Reese felt hope.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [](http://tscc-las.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tscc-las.livejournal.com/)**tscc_las** . The first prompt was ""On the night we first met, John's father, Kyle Reese, told me words I remember to this day. He meant them as a warning, I think of them as words to live by. He told me of an apocalypse yet to come. Like a Pandora's box, he unpacked every horror, every evil, every dark this that haunts our future. He also left me an unborn son to whom he bequeathed what remained in the box after the nightmares fled. Hope." --- Sarah Connor


End file.
